16th November 2000

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350 compelling images of Derry's experience of the Troubles are to be made available on the Internet by the University of Ulster.

The set of black and white images is part of a larger collection of evocative photographs taken by local photographer Eamon Melaugh during the late 1960s and early 1970s depicting life in the city during a
turbulent period of the city's history.

The archive will be available through the CAIN (Conflict Archive on the INternet) web site, hosted at the Magee College campus.

The Melaugh collection is the latest photographic resource to be made available worldwide by CAIN. It joins a number of smaller collections portraying aspects of life and culture in Northern Ireland during the past 30-plus years.

It can be found at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/photographs/

Strongly represented in the Melaugh collection are: street scenes; the British Army; Republican paramilitaries; civil rights protests; parades; riot scenes; Bloody Sunday; and children and the conflict.

The photographs can be viewed free of charge by anyone with Internet access and may be used freely by students, researchers, teachers and lecturers in their academic work.

The CAIN web site (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/) provides an extensive range of information and source material on the conflict in Northern Ireland and politics in the region. The site is heavily used by a worldwide audience, having received 4 million 'hits' in the past year.

In making the latest collection available the CAIN site is seeking to encourage other photographers to make a selection of any relevant images available at the web site.

Eamon Melaugh, the photographer, said: Only a few of these photographs have been published before, while the majority have been stored away for 30 years. I felt the images would be of use to those studying the conflict and I was happy to make the collection available at the CAIN site. I hope the photographs will give people an impression of what life was like in Derry during this important period. The photographs of heavily armoured British Army vehicles patrolling civilian areas of Derry are a clear indication of the nature of the conflict at that time. For ordinary people the conflict took on all the appearance of a war even if it was not referred to as such. I hope that such scenes are a thing of the past and are never to be repeated again.

Martin Melaugh, CAIN Project Manager, said: "These photographs represent an important visual record of events in Derry during the early period of the conflict. I was delighted to make this collection more widely through the Internet. The CAIN site attracts a worldwide audience and this new section will be of interest to many users of the site. If anyone else has a collection of photographs that they would be interested in making available at the CAIN site they can contact me at the University of Ulster."

For further information, please contact:

Press Office Department of Communication and Development
Telephone: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk